Part 25 (1/2)

”Seor Pinzn, would you kindly organize a search?”

His fury properly focused now, Pinzn immediately divided the men into search parties, not forgetting to leave a good contingent behind to guard the stockade against theft or sabotage. Pedro could not help but see that Pinzn was a good leader, quick of mind and able to make himself understood and obeyed at once. That only made him more dangerous, as far as Pedro was concerned.

When the men had dispersed, Coln stood on the sh.o.r.e, looking out over the many bits of wood that were bobbing on the waves. ”Not even if all the gunpowder on the Pinta exploded all at once,” said the Captain-General, ”not even then could it destroy the s.h.i.+p so completely.”

”What could have done it, then?” said Pedro.

”G.o.d could do it,” said the Captain-General. ”Or perhaps the devil. The Indians know nothing about gunpowder. If they find this man who supposedly did it, do you think he'll be a Moor?”

So the Captain-General was remembering the curse of the mountain witch. One calamity after another. What could be worse than this, to lose the last s.h.i.+p?

But when they found him, the man wasn't a Moor. Nor was he an Indian. He was white and bearded, a large man, a strong one. His clothing had obviously been bizarre even before the men tore much of it from him. They held him, a garrotte around his neck, forcing him to his knees in front of the Captain-General.

”It was all I could do to keep him alive long enough for you to speak to him, sir,” said Pinzn.

”Why did you do this?” asked Coln.

The man answered in Spanish - thickly accented, but understandable. ”When I first heard about your expedition I vowed that if you succeeded, you would never return to Spain.”

”Why?” demanded the Captain-General.

”My name is Kemal,” said the man. ”I'm a Turk. There is no G.o.d but Allah, and Mohammad is his Prophet.”

The men muttered in rage. Infidel. Heathen. Devil.

”I will still return to Spain,” said Coln. ”You haven't stopped me.”

”Fool,” said Kemal. ”How will you return to Spain when you're surrounded by enemies?”

Pinzn immediately roared out, ”You're the only enemy, infidel!”

”How do you think I got here, if I hadn't had the help of some of these.” With his head, he indicated the men around him. Then he looked Pinzn in the eye and winked.

”Liar!” cried Pinzn. ”Kill him! Kill him!”

The men who held the Turk obeyed at once, even though Coln raised his voice and cried out for them to stop. It was possible that in the roar of fury they didn't hear him. And it didn't take long for the Turk to die. Instead of strangling him, they pulled the garrotte so tight and twisted it so hard that it broke his neck and with only a twitch or two he was gone.

At last the tumult ended. In the silence, the Captain-General spoke. ”Fools. You killed him too quickly. He told us nothing.”

”What could he have told us, except lies?” said Pinzn.

Coln took a long, measured look at him. ”We'll never know, will we? As far as I can tell, the only people glad of that would be the ones he might have named as his conspirators.”

”What are you accusing me of?” demanded Pinzn.

”I haven't accused you at all.”

Only then did Pinzn seem to realize that his own actions had pointed the finger of suspicion at him. He began to nod, and then smiled. ”I see, Captain-General. You finally found a way to discredit me, even if it took blowing up my caravel to do it.”

”Watch what you say to the Captain-General.” Segovia's voice whipped out across the crowd.

”Let him watch what he says to me. I didn't have to bring the Pinta back here. I've proved my loyalty. Every man here knows me. I'm not the foreigner. How do we know that this Coln is even a Christian, let alone a Genovese? After all, that black witch and the little wh.o.r.e interpreter both knew his native language, when not one honest Spaniard could understand it.”

Pinzn hadn't been present on either occasion, Pedro noted. Obviously there had been a lot of talk about who spoke what language to whom.

Coln looked at him steadily. ”There would have been no expedition if I had not spent half my life arguing for it. Would I destroy it now, when success was so close?”

”You would never have gotten us home anyway, you posturing fool!” cried Pinzn. ”That's why I came back, because I saw how difficult it was to sail east against the wind. I knew you weren't sailor enough to bring my brother and my friends back home.”

Coln allowed himself a hint of a smile. ”If you were such a fine sailor, you'd know that to the north of us the prevailing wind blows from the west.”

”And how would you know that?” The scorn in Pinzn's voice was outrageous.

”You're speaking to the commander of Their Majesties' fleet,” said Segovia.

Pinzn fell silent for the moment; perhaps he had spoken more openly than he intended, for now at least.

”When you were a pirate,” said Coln quietly, ”I sailed the coast of Africa with the Portuguese.”

From the growling of the men, Pedro knew that the Captain-General had just committed a serious mistake. The rivalry between the men of Palos and the sailors of the Portuguese coast was intensely felt, all the more so because the Portuguese were so clearly the better, farther-reaching sailors. And to throw in Pinzn's face his days of piracy - well, that was a crime that all of Palos was guilty of, during the hardest days of the war against the Moors, when normal trade was impossible. Coln might have b.u.t.tressed his credentials as a sailor, but he did it at the immediate cost of losing what vestiges of loyalty he might have commanded among the men.

”Dispose of the body,” said the Captain-General. Then he turned his back on them and returned to the camp.

The runner from Guacanagari couldn't stop laughing as he told the story of the death of the Silent Man. ”The white men are so stupid that they killed him first and tortured him afterward!”

Diko heard this with relief. Kemal had died quickly. And the Pinta had been destroyed.

”We must watch the white men's village,” said Diko. ”The white men will turn against their cacique soon, and we must make sure he comes to Ankuash, and not to any other village.”

Chapter 12 - Refuge.

The woman up in the mountain had cursed him, but Cristoforo knew that it was not by any sort of witchery. The curse was that he couldn't think of anything but her, anything but what she had said. Every subject kept leading back to the challenges she had issued.

Could G.o.d have possibly sent her? Was she, at last, the first reaffirmation he had received since that vision on the beach? She knew so much: The words that the Savior had spoken to him. The language of his youth in Genova. His sense of guilt about his son, left to be raised by the monks of La Rdbida.

Yet she was nothing like what he looked for. Angels were dazzling white, weren't they? That's how all the artists showed them. So perhaps she wasn't an angel. But why would G.o.d send her a woman - an African woman? Weren't black people devils? Everyone said so, and in Spain it was well known that black Moors fought like demons. And among the Portuguese it was well known that the black savages of the Guinea coast engaged in devil wors.h.i.+p and magic, and cursed with diseases that quickly killed any white man who dared set foot on African sh.o.r.es.

On the other hand, his purpose was to baptize the people he found at the end of his voyage, wasn't it? If they could be baptized, it meant they could be saved. If they could be saved, then perhaps she was right, and once they were converted these people would be Christian and have the same rights as any European.

But they were savages. They went about naked. They couldn't read or write.

They could learn.

If only he could see the world through his page's eyes. Young Pedro was obviously smitten with Chipa. Dark as she was, squat and ugly, she did have a good smile, and no one could deny that she was as smart as any Spanish girl. She was learning about Christ. She insisted on being baptized at once. When that happened, shouldn't she have the same protection as any other Christian?